Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Karl Henning]

Just as a point of information:  Has any Trump supporter on this thread, at any time, agreed that merely being a relation or friend to Trump is insufficient qualification for the positions to which the President has appointed them?

Speak up now;  don't let your silence damn your critical faculties.

[Turner]

But Ivanka is just the best and most qualified for all sorts of things:

"My daughter, Ivanka, just arrived in South Korea. We cannot have a better, or smarter, person representing our country."

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/967023015035797504?lang=da

[BasilValentine]

Well I for one am also very interested in assessing Ivanka Trump the daughters level of Stockholm Syndrome.

Ivanka is voluntarily participating in the Trump organization's ongoing criminal enterprise, having spearheaded the money laundering operation in Azerbaijan (Trump Tower Baku), in addition to complicity in various kinds of fraud at Trump Tower Panama. The Stockholm defense isn't likely to work. 

[SimonNZ]

I was thinking more of her attitude to his sexual predator behavior - having herself been a frequent and open object of his lustful thoughts.

[Karl Henning]

Who knew that electing a con man, who is the head of a famously dysfunctional family, to the highest office of the land could be a mistake?

[Karl Henning]

Manafort to appear in court today.

[Karl Henning]

Readers of Today's WorldView are well aware of how the far right has gone mainstream over the past year. They were brought there by a confluence of events: President Trump's rise to the White House on an ultranationalist platform, the electoral gains made by once-fringe parties in Western Europe and the deepening illiberalism of parties in power farther east. As a result, we've seen a rise in Islamophobia as well as widespread demonization of immigrants in various countries.

But this resurgent nativism also encompasses an old and dark tradition: a virulent hatred of Jews.

You could see it in last year's infamous white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville,  where hundreds — inspired in part by Trump's politics — chanted "Jews will not replace us." (The president decries anti-Semitism, but had a notoriously tough time denouncing the neo-Nazi marchers.) You could see it in the sly game played by Poland's ruling party, which has moved to criminalize discussion of Poland's role in the Holocaust while looking the other way during a nationalist demonstration in November where supporters chanted "Pure Poland, Jew-Free Poland." And you could even see it in the hideous slaughter of 17 high school students in Florida this month — the shooter's magazines were reportedly etched with swastikas.

[Turner]

Jeff Sessions is acting in a disgraceful way - says Trump.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/968856971075051521
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jeff-sessions-fisa-inspector-general-comey-russia-obama-appoint-twitter-a8232901.html

[Karl Henning]

The most ominous line in the new Jared Kushner story
by Aaron Blake

As a new Washington Post report about Jared Kushner notes, it's not unusual for foreign governments to seek ways to leverage White House staff members. So the fact that at least four countries tried to do so with President Trump's son-in-law isn't a complete shock.

What's more troublesome for Kushner and the White House, though, is how much easier he might have made it.

The main disclosure of The Post's new report is that the officials from those countries — China, Israel and Mexico and the United Arab Emirates — have discussed ways to manipulate Kushner. Their discussions were shared with the White House after national security adviser H.R. McMaster in spring 2017 requested all such intelligence involving White House staff members. Unsurprisingly, their efforts focused on Kushner's complicated business dealings and financial difficulties of his family's business.

But beyond that head-turning revelation are a couple of sections worth emphasizing.

The first is about Kushner's failures to run foreign contacts through official channels. We knew that the senior White House adviser had updated the foreign contacts on his security clearance form — known as an SF-86 — multiple times after initially not disclosing them, and that this could be problematic. The new report says he also did not coordinate foreign contacts through the National Security Council, which is in charge of foreign policy matters, and that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been asking about the protocols Kushner used in setting up those phone calls.

That's an especially juicy subplot, because it suggests that Kushner was holding calls with foreign leaders effectively off the grid. You may recall that the Russian ambassador to the United States once told his superiors in Moscow that Kushner had sought a secret communication channel with the Kremlin.

But here's perhaps the most interesting paragraph in the whole story:

Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was "naive and being tricked" in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel, said one former White House official.

Why on Earth would foreign officials insist on working only through Kushner? Perhaps it was a totally noncontroversial and understandable reason — such as that he was focused on their particular area of concern or that he had built relationships with them. It's also quite possible it was because he was the president's son-in-law, in addition to his senior adviser, and they thought he had more power.

A less-innocent possibility is that it was because they thought he was someone they could leverage — either via his inexperience or his financial situation. Those finances have been a focus of the Mueller investigation, including a meeting during the transition period with a Kremlin-allied Russian banker. The Kushner family bought 666 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan in 2007 for $1.8 billion, and $1.2 billion in debt is due in less than a year. It has sought investors for a redevelopment plan but has not found any.

What we know right now is that something has prevented Kushner from obtaining a permanent security clearance for more than a year, and on Tuesday we learned he and others with interim clearances would no longer be able to view top-secret materials. That's a big setback for Kushner, who has been able to read the highly sensitive President's Daily Briefing and was reluctant to give up his access.

The picture of precisely what was holding up that process is still murky. But with efforts like this lurking behind the scenes and Kushner not being especially forthcoming about his foreign contacts, it's not difficult to see why he couldn't get over the hump. Increasingly, the question would seem to be why he was even granted access this whole time if such consequential issues hadn't been resolved — and suspicions like McMaster's had been raised.

[Karl Henning]

"The fact that a compromised individual who is a huge potential blackmail target had consistent access to our nation's most closely held secrets for more than a year is just unconscionable," Max Bergmann, a former State Department official now at the Center for American Progress, tells me. "If this was any other administration, Kushner would have been out long ago. Anyone else would not be allowed back in the White House."

[bwv 1080]

On a positive note, it looks like Trump has no plans to proceed with RFK Jr.'s 'Vaccine Safety Commission'

[Turner]

Today it's Hope Hicks, White House Communication's Director, who's resigning, BTW one day after participating in Russia hearings.

[Baron Scarpia]

Today it's Hope Hicks, White House Communication's Director, who's resigning, BTW one day after participating in Russia hearings.

This will solve the problem of figuring out what it is she does.

[Turner]

Well, she´s said to have personally written the recent "I Hear You"-etc. note, brought by POTUS to a public meeting, which probably wasn´t meant to be photographed and later read by others. Apparently, she forgot to add this as a 6th point on that list ...

[BasilValentine]

quote author=Turner link=topic=26377.msg1130870#msg1130870 date=1519855337]
Today it's Hope Hicks, White House Communication's Director, who's resigning, BTW one day after participating in Russia hearings.
[/quote]

Interesting. And she refused to answer any questions in front of the House Intelligence Committee pertaining to the period of Trump's presidency. The only questions she answered were ones she had already answered in front of the Senate Committee. I think I know what this means: Hicks has already spilled her guts to Mueller and she is under a gag order. Why? Because Mueller knows fucking Devin Nunes will run to daddy with any information she might give, and Mueller wants to be sure Trump and the other targets don't know how much he knows when he finally gets to grill them. So her refusal to testify is, IMO, great news for those who want to see more of the criminal element go down. Hope has already sung and she has quit because everyone in the WH, if they are thinking like me, now knows she has sung.

[SimonNZ]

I hope she's got a book deal signed. Shed be the one person in the Trump white house whose memoirs might have some resemblance to reality, not just batshit crazy. And has had full access and witness and confidence.

[André]

« Trump will come down and it will be ugly. There will be blood. Lots of blood ».

Michael Wolff in interview, in Paris where he is busy promoting his book.

This is all very entertaining. Hollywood scripts don't come any better  .

[amw]

Hicks was the longest lasting "true believer" in the trump administration iirc.... someone who genuinely bought all the MAGA, build the wall, drain the swamp stuff. Or at least she was painted that way by a lot of the more gossipy news outlets (Politico, NYT, Axios). If it's true I wonder why she flipped. Found out her idol had feet of clay? Thought Trump's ideals were betrayed by the Kushners/Kellys/Pences of the administration? Had a rapid change of political ideology? Got tired of people insinuating she was trying to become Wife #4? Or I mean maybe she did something illegal and turning state's evidence was her way to save herself bc evidently never learned that snitches get stitches >.>

[SimonNZ]

Katy Tur had positive things to say about Hicks in her book. Painted her as loyal and committed without being a true believer. And the only one who could bring some kind of scheduling order to the chaos.

[kishnevi]

"The fact that a compromised individual who is a huge potential blackmail target had consistent access to our nation's most closely held secrets for more than a year is just unconscionable," Max Bergmann, a former State Department official now at the Center for American Progress, tells me. "If this was any other administration, Trump would have been out long ago. Anyone else would not be allowed back in the White House."

Corrected for greater accuracy.